Genesis of Altmetrics or Article-level Metrics for Measuring Efficacy of Scholarly Communications: Current Perspectives

The article-level metrics (ALMs) or altmetrics becomes a new trendsetter in recent times for measuring the impact of scientific publications and their social outreach to intended audiences. The popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin and social bookmarks such as Mendeley and CiteULike are nowadays widely used for communicating research to larger transnational audiences. In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment got signed by the scientific and researchers communities across the world. This declaration has given preference to the ALM or altmetrics over traditional but faulty journal impact factor (JIF)-based assessment of career scientists. JIF does not consider impact or influence beyond citations count as this count reflected only through Thomson Reuters' Web of Science database. Furthermore, JIF provides indicator related to the journal, but not related to a published paper. Thus, altmetrics now becomes an alternative metrics for performance assessment of individual scientists and their contributed scholarly publications. This paper provides a glimpse of genesis of altmetrics in measuring efficacy of scholarly communications and highlights available altmetric tools and social platforms linking altmetric tools, which are widely used in deriving altmetric scores of scholarly publications. The paper thus argues for institutions and policy makers to pay more attention to altmetrics based indicators for evaluation purpose but cautions that proper safeguards and validations are needed before their adoption

An Efficient Codebook Initialization Approach for LBG Algorithm

In VQ based image compression technique has three major steps namely (i) Codebook Design, (ii) VQ Encoding Process and (iii) VQ Decoding Process. The performance of VQ based image compression technique depends upon the constructed codebook. A widely used technique for VQ codebook design is the Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) algorithm. However the performance of the standard LBG algorithm is highly dependent on the choice of the initial codebook. In this paper, we have proposed a simple and very effective approach for codebook initialization for LBG algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is computationally efficient and gives expected performance as compared to the standard LBG algorithm

Open Access to Scientific Knowledge: Policy Perspectives and National Initiatives

Various initiatives are taken globally to make knowledge repositories more accessible to researchers by exploiting the internet platform and developing a model that allows free access. India is also actively participating in this new initiative. Open access to scientific knowledge is an integral part of India’s S&T policy intervention. Some of the major international and Indian national initiatives are highlighted. Further efforts that would be required to make Indian participation more fruitful are also brought out

INSDOC’S contribution to bibliometrics

Traces the history of bibliometric research, training and activities in INSDOC. Describes briefly the objectives, facilities, services, research activities, and publications of National Centre on Bibliometrics

Delhi Declaration on Open Access 2018: An overview

This article provides a brief introduction, genesis and salient features of the "Delhi Declaration on Open Access", pronounced on 14th February 2018

CARBON EMISSION DISCLOSURES BY HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN UK - DETERMINANTS, CARBON REDUCTION TARGET, VOLUMETRIC AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURE AND INSTITUTIONAL REPUTATION

This thesis investigates the determinants of the carbon emission disclosures (CED) in UK higher education institutions (HEI), relationship between such CED in terms of volume and quality and the role of such disclosures on HEIs’ green reputation. The study recognises that HEIs are distinct in characteristics from profit seeking organizations, which has been widely researched in literature. Generalizing the research studies on profit-oriented companies for the majorly publicly funded UK HEIs may mislead any outcome. This study examines three questions. First, what are the determinant factors for the CED by UK HEIs? (Based on stakeholder theory and institutional theory). Second, what is the relationship between CED volume and quality? (Based on stewardship theory). And finally, what is the impact of CED on institutional green reputation? (Based on signalling theory). An initial sample of all available UK HEIs in 2012 was taken to study the carbon emission disclosures made in annual reports. Carbon disclosures in standalone reports were also accounted for. The first part of the research investigates the determinants of CED in annual reports of UK HEIs, with a special concern of the impact of the carbon reduction targets set by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) on such disclosures. A disclosure index was prepared to capture both disclosure categories and types. The relationship between CED and its determinants were examined using TOBIT linear regression analysis, associated by sensitivity tests. Carbon reduction targets by HEFCE were found to have significant positive impact on CED. The results also show that carbon audit and HEI region have significant impact in determining CED volume. The second part of the study explores the relationship between quality and volume of CED in the UK HEIs, with a special concern of the impact of HEFCE carbon reduction target on such disclosures. CED volume has been criticised as being merely wordy and therefore is not good enough. This study explores the decision usefulness of the CED by HEIs i.e. whether the more CED means more useful it is. A framework was developed to measure the CED quality. The relationship between CED volume and quality were examined using Ordered PROBIT regression model. CED volume in annual reports and HEFCE carbon reduction target were found to have significant positive impact on CED quality. The third part explores the impact of CED by UK HEIs on their environmental reputation. The study is distinct in investigating whether and how the HEI CED contributes towards the environmental reputation of the institution. The green score was found from the People and Planet organisation database. All universities having a score were entered into the initial sample. The relationship between green score and CED was examined using robust least squared regression model. CED, Carbon emission and audit were found to have significant impact on green reputation. This study clarifies the impact of CED to motivate the HEIs to engage in such disclosure. This thesis contributes to the existing knowledge by presenting a framework for determinants and consequences of carbon emission disclosure with respect to UK HEIs. There exists a void in research with carbon disclosures by HEIs, which was widely researched for profit seeking organisations. The study adds to the earlier related studies by Godemann et al. (2011), Nejati et al. (2011) and Mazhar et al. (2014) by its own contribution to the disclosure literature. The thesis is distinct in finding causal determinants and impacts different from those found earlier for profit oriented companies and the relationship between the volume and quality of disclosures, which proves the worthiness of the study. Thus, the thesis findings open a fascinating area of investigation and expect to motivate further research in the area

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Research Communicators

The emergence of Web 2.0 and simultaneously Library 2.0 platforms has helped the library and information professionals to outreach to new audiences beyond their physical boundaries. In a globalized society, information becomes very useful resource for socio-economic empowerment of marginalized communities, economic prosperity of common citizens, and knowledge enrichment of liberated minds. Scholarly information becomes both developmental and functional for researchers working towards advancement of knowledge. We must recognize a relay of information flow and information ecology while pursuing scholarly research. Published scholarly literatures we consult that help us in creation of new knowledge. Similarly, our published scholarly works should be outreached to future researchers for regeneration of next dimension of knowledge. Fortunately, present day research communicators have many freely available personalized digital tools to outreach to globalized research audiences having similar research interests. These tools and techniques, already adopted by many researchers in different subject areas across the world, should be enthusiastically utilized by LIS researchers in South Asia for global dissemination of their scholarly research works. This newly found enthusiasm will soon become integral part of the positive habits and cultural practices of research communicators in LIS domain.Comment: Book Chapter. In Gautam Maity et. al. (Eds.), Charaibeti: Golden Jubilee Commemorative Volume (pp. 356-365). Kolkata, India: Department of Library and Information Science, Jadavpur University, 2014. ISBN: 978-81-929886-0-

Open Science Metrics and Scholarly Communications

This lecture titled "Open Science Metrics and Scholarly Communications" was presented in the Skill-Development Workshop on ICT-enabled Research Evaluation Metrics for Information Professionals”, DLIS, Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India, during 21-27 September 2023